


PLEASE DON'T ABSTAIN FROM REMEMBERING

by Val Mora (valmora)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Birth Control, Gardening, Other, WIP Amnesty, abstinence-only sex education doesn't work for humans and researchers have studies to prove it, programming jokes, references to extremely eldritch and also mundane sex, uh I'm genuinely sorry about all the programming jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28116168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: Angels wearing a human shape and not making an effort may be sexless, but while angels in their true forms have nothing that a human mind can comprehend as genitals, they do have them.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 4





	PLEASE DON'T ABSTAIN FROM REMEMBERING

**Author's Note:**

> I know that it's tacitly canon and also word of God that Crowley doesn't understand mammalian reproduction. You may imagine that he's accustomed to partible parternity and/or parthenogenesis where the creatures of Earth are concerned.
> 
> Notice that this fic is a WIP amnesty, meaning it is "complete-ish" and will not be continued.

Aziraphale and Crowley were in bed. This does not mean, in that coquettish fashion sometimes used for comedy, that they were in separate beds, or in the same bed but quite innocently asleep, or doing whatever else approximately man-shaped beings can do on a comfortable horizontal surface. It must instead be asserted that they were _in bed_ in bed, and had up until quite recently been performing an act that Crowley would have referred to as _having sex_ and Aziraphale would have, eyes twinkling, called _fornicating._ 1

Crowley flexed his ankles and ensured that his right calf wouldn't cramp, and regarded the rather nice wooden beams supporting the ceiling, original to the building circa 1750.

"Well," he said, and then let it trail off.

"Quite," Aziraphale agreed, taking Crowley's hand and nuzzling into his shoulder happily.

"S'pose I could go for another round," Crowley said, in tones that would rightfully be interpreted as indicating that any previous number of rounds had been quite nice, but much like Pringles, there was no way of getting enough.

"Oh, yes," Aziraphale said, shuffling in for a kiss.

* * *

Angels wearing a human shape and not making an effort may be sexless, but while angels in their true forms have nothing that a human mind can comprehend as genitals, they do have them. The LORD God, blessed be She, apparently later decided to use angels as version 1.0 of the creation of living beings, and significantly revised the reproductive capabilities. The development process being what it is when you're working with pure matter/energy when version control and proper QA procedures haven't been invented yet2, the implementation of reproduction used for angels was somewhat unusual compared to what was used for Earth. So while She hadn't exactly advertised that feature in angels, it was all there in the woman pages, and some beings really do RTFM.

Crowley had. As far as the Host were concerned, the law of physics had metaphorically been scrawled without proof on a napkin and worked because She said so. But since astronomical objects were rather reliant on the fiddly details, he'd had to read the manual. Or, well - hadn't had to, exactly. It had just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But it had only given him more questions.

* * *

When Crowley and Aziraphale had decided, in the wake of the Apocalypse failing to happen, that engaging in fraternization sounded not only enjoyable but positively irresistible, Aziraphale had said, "Do you want to? - the risk, you know."

Crowley had put his tumblr3 down on the table and looked at Aziraphale through his glasses and said, "You mean, do I want to have proper sex?"

"I know you love children," Aziraphale said, quietly.

Crowley stared at him for a long moment, jaw moving slightly like he was thinking about how to respond, and finally he said, "No."

And Aziraphale, who had been rather warming to the thought of finding out whether any child of their union would inherit some measure of Crowley's sharp-shimmering inner self, or the spinning fractal arch of his wings, heard in Crowley's response: _not unless we were sure it would be safe,_ and knew it to mean _never._ Aziraphale wasn't sure what Hell would try. Based on Crowley's reaction he was sure it was unpleasant. But he did know that Heaven would never stop trying to kill it.

* * *

The nature of angelic reproduction was simply this: it was sufficiently rare that anyone who hadn't read the documentation wouldn't know it was possible unless they then produced offspring.

Having read the manual, Aziraphale was vaguely aware that there were a few angels who were - rather newer than the rest of them. Aziraphale himself had been made by Her own will, of course, but he was reasonably sure that She had had only an indirect role in the making of Kavdiel, one of the other members of his old regiment. Kavdiel bore a certain resemblance to another angel, one of the bureaucracy whose name Aziraphale didn't know. The similarity was to a degree uncharacteristic of other angels, who tended to broad similarities, such as "10^6 eyes and made of round objects" and "six wings," whereas Kavdiel's level of similarity was as close as "10^6 eyes, shimmering in the spectrum of a 1:10:5 ratio of neon:argon:radon, made of wheels with a central axis and 108 spokes", which was very nearly unique.

There was no such thing as a twin, among angels. Although that might have deserved the qualifier "yet." A popular expression about monkeys and the works of Shakespeare, adapted to angels, might be: if you let the Host of Heaven and all of Hell have whatever sex they like with each other using the genitals She gave them, eventually a set of twins is very likely to result. It's only a matter of probability, and She controls all the odds.

* * *

Crowley heated up Aziraphale's tea three times that afternoon. Aziraphale had been sucked in by a newly-purchased copy of the _Book of Ingenious Devices_ and was sighing happily over the diagrams, which were still clear and crisp despite their age. Crowley, meanwhile, had spent the interim hours flicking through several newspaper apps and a dozen websites purporting to sell grafted peach trees. He was thinking of branching out, maybe knocking the ceiling on his apartment through to the sky regardless of whatever his upstairs neighbor might experience. He had a feeling Aziraphale might like eating straight off the vine, and possibly from Crowley's hand as well.

Grapes seemed a bit ambitious for a first time, and tomatoes were traditional. Squash, possibly, although he'd heard stories, and he had a vague recollection that the squash in the Garden had been prolific even before humans had gone around improving on what She'd given them.

Back in the 1700s he'd had a little tobacco garden in his country house so he could roll his own, so he wasn't unaware of how to grow nightshades, and the edible ones really were some of Aziraphale's favorites. Though there'd been that time in Tokaj where Aziraphale had cursed a vineyard whose owner had really been asking for it and ended up having a hand in inventing botrytized wine, and Aziraphale had been in charge of the winemaking at a couple of monasteries over the years. Might be nice, watching him crush the grapes by foot.

"What do you think about making our own wine?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale hummed a not terribly inquisitive question mark. From long experience, Crowley interpreted this as "I suppose I must allow you to address me, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to you," so he repeated, "Wine. Making our own. Opinion?"

Aziraphale was roused sufficiently by 'wine' to say, "Yes please," which Crowley decided to interpret literally and with malice aforethought.

"Red or white."

"White," Aziraphale said. "The one with the blue label - can't remember if it's in Hungarian or Turkish. 4 Next to the Chileans."

Crowley went and got the wine, since turning down hospitality would just be rude. "Right," he said, once he'd poured for both of them and was resting his right arm over Aziraphale's shoulder, the appropriate wine glass held enticingly next to Aziraphale's face. "To a successful first pressing," he said.

"Mm," Aziraphale said, taking the wine and sipping it, and then he seemed to wake up. "What did you just say?"

"We're making wine, angel," Crowley said. "I thought it might be time to expand the houseplant collection, and grapes ought to be a good start."

"You can't make wine from table grapes," Aziraphale said suspiciously.

"I know that!" Crowley said, a little outraged. He had the right: those Carmenere grapes hadn't saved _themselves_ from extinction.

"Well," Aziraphale said. "I have been missing making my own, if you must know."

"Right," Crowley said, and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. Those vines he'd just ordered had better turn into the best wine he'd ever opened, or else.

* * *

When Aziraphale saw the rows of grape vines - two varieties; Crowley had been thinking of making a blend if the wines called for it - in the apartment, open to the sun under a bright skylight, every vine clinging desperately to its supports, Aziraphale covered his mouth with his hands and, in a choked voice, said, "Oh, it's beautiful."

Crowley shifted his shoulders, towards and then away from Aziraphale like someone had jerked his marionette strings, and said, "They're still being trained up. We'll see."

"I know it will be lovely," Aziraphale said.

Crowley had put a little picnic setup on the concrete floor, so after they ate, and Crowley showed Aziraphale the mangosteen and pawpaw trees in the back, growing frantically and nearly ready to burst into flower, they sat back down and fucked for six hours. They only stopped because Crowley decided he was done and wanted to cuddle, so Aziraphale petted Crowley's hair as Crowley rested against him, and Crowley slept, content.

* * *

Crowley wasn't sure about his and Aziraphale's human-shaped bodies and reproduction.

Two angels still wholly blessed in Her regard definitely made angels if they used their true forms - he'd been friends with an angel named Jaïzel back in the beginning, who'd definitely been formed from another angel. Being a demon was more than a metaphysical state, but he didn't know if it was heritable, and demon-angel hybrids were probably at least sterile, if they were even viable. Not that he cared about or wanted grandchildren.

But the whole "will it be an angel" thing was only if they had real, true sex with their whole selves. There was no reason his and Aziraphale's corporations couldn't get knocked up, and a child conceived solely through sex in their human-shaped bodies would be...who even knew what. Sex between a human and an ethereal or occult being could only involve the being's approximately-human shaped corporation, because the alternative was the human's eyes being burned out, or all their organs growing teeth and hair, or other, even less pleasant, consequences. But the kid still ended up not quite human. A double-dose of it would make the result even less normal - and that wasn't even starting on what Heaven and Hell would do if they knew that he and Aziraphale had had a child, human-style or otherwise.

So he made sure that when he had a cock, it fired blanks, and when he had a vulva and vagina, he didn't manifest a uterus to go with.

* * *

Aziraphale ostensibly ran a book club. This was a fiction worthy of any of his favorite authors, including most of the prophets, but it had two members who came to the shop irregularly.

One member was a recently-emeritum professor of mathematics who had once been dramatically rescued by Aziraphale from some unpleasantness on the steps of the bookstore, and the other was a man who had begun life as a miscreant in Soho, then become a medical doctor, and in his old age had become an amateur but dedicated Islamic scholar.

The former had been known to Aziraphale as "Yoyo" since their respective self-introductions over a cup of tea and some bandages. The latter was Ali.

Ali and Yoyo had agreed sometime around 2000 that no, A.Z. wasn't getting older. Ali had accepted this with the grace of the faithful, and Yoyo had decided that mentioning it would be rude, what with any sufficiently analyzed magic and all. Mostly, everyone drank tea and talked about books, and since Ali and Yoyo didn't try to buy anything, Aziraphale allowed this. He had taken to providing tea somewhere around 1995 on the doctrine that if they were holding tea, they would not try to hold books.

You may now picture Ali and Yoyo's faces when Crowley - known to them from four decades of thinly-veiled gossip sessions posing as a book club - strode in holding a basket of grapes and announced, "Time for the _crushing_ , angel, get your feet out."

"You're making wine?" Yoyo asked.

"Yeah," Crowley said, and then to Ali, "Sorry not sorry."

"None taken," Ali said genially, putting down his teacup. "When did this start?"

"About six weeks ago," Crowley said. "Would've done this bit earlier but the vines needed to shape up."

"You planning on sharing?" Yoyo asked, because thirty years of teaching undergraduates had blunted xir subtlety.

"No," Crowley said. If you were going to make wine with your lover - they'd agreed on 'lover', in the end, since 'partner' felt like it was going a bit fast for both of them, and 'boyfriend' was wholly inappropriate for beings who predated human genders - you wouldn't give it away, even to a friend. Besides, he had plans for Aziraphale's feet afterwards. 5

"My dear," Aziraphale said. "Surely we could..?" It was a pro forma protest.

"Don't count your chickens," Crowley said. 

"Quite right," Aziraphale said, shoulders easing. "I suppose I ought to go tend to these grapes before they go bad."

"Bad in a way you don't want," Ali said.

"Precisely," Aziraphale said. Yoyo and Ali allowed themselves to be herded to the doors, so Crowley and Aziraphale went into the back room, which had found itself sporting a rather nice set of demijohns a few weeks earlier. Crowley dumped the basket into a nice clean press that had been leading a blameless existence moldering gently in a back room in California after the owner's daughter had decided to plant almond trees instead, and he and Aziraphale crushed everything down into pulp.

"That's a way to get a workout," Crowley muttered. He'd gone through a couple of fitness phases when such things were in fashion, although he generally tried to avoid the actual exertion part of it, since people tended to notice that he didn't sweat.

"But it's very wholesome," Aziraphale said, sounding unconvinced. He'd had to strip down in order to keep his clothes properly clean. "I don't think I remember things being quite so much work back in the day."

"Lots more machines doing the work for you, I s'pose," Crowley said. "Well, that and industrial processing."

"Yes, you're right," Aziraphale said. "I can't say I miss all that fussing about making our own yeast. And sifting out the mouse faeces from the flour."

"Yum," Crowley said. "Remember that time in Egypt with the flat pitta?" He made an indicative gesture.

"Unfortunately," Aziraphale said. He patted one of the demijohns absently and said to it, "I'm sure you won't take that as an example, will you?"

"Not if it knows what's good for it," Crowley said.

* * *

Aziraphale apparently wanted to be entwined more thoroughly and slipped sideways from his corporation to do it.

Crowley withdrew from Aziraphale's embrace, both physically and metaphysically, and stared at him with the eyes he had in his corporation and with the ones that had healed enough to see after the molten sulfur.

"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry," Aziraphale said. His hands, previously wrapped around Crowley's shoulders, were now resting on the bed between them.

"No," Crowley said. "'s a bit." He licked his lips. "Haven't seen you really out of your corporation in a while." He felt a bit like he'd tried to eat something that was too hot and burned his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

Aziraphale said, "Do you want to?"

"Bit risky," Crowley said. "Seeing each other outside the corporations for once, no one to kill us if we don't say no."

Aziraphale's mouth turned down. "You're quite right," he said. He brushed his hand against Crowley's cheek. "It really is so nice to see you properly, though."

"Well," Crowley said, shifting closer to him on the mattress. He didn't actually know what he looked like anymore. Mirrors shattered when he tried to use them to look at himself outside of his corporation, and water boiled dry. He'd had good luck with a bronze mirror in China a couple millennia back, until he realized that the stylized lines etched on the back had gone from merely hinting at a dragon, to being entirely too herpetologically accurate. Over the following days, the serpent started growing eyes, which turned into holes all the way through the metal. He'd given up after that.

But Aziraphale was different. Aziraphale was meant to survive looking upon demons - ostensibly so he could kill them, but that was the nice thing about making your own decisions, wasn't it.

"If you want," Crowley said.

"I very much do," Aziraphale said.

So Crowley got metaphysically naked. Aziraphale, similarly bared, didn't do anything so composed of gross matter as kiss him, but lacking several textbooks on theoretical physics, that's a reasonable metaphor.

Aziraphale emanated a concept analogous to "You really are very lovely."

Crowley shaped himself into an insouciant multidimensional curve and projected a combination of enticement, eagerness, anxiety, affection, and desire. Aziraphale's response indicated that the enticement was working, the affection was returned, the desire was thoroughly reciprocated, and the anxiety was unnecessary but charming.

Some quite effective metaphorical making out ensued, with each of them emanating progressively more emphatic and less convincing protestations about unintended pregnancy, until Aziraphale disentangled himself from Crowley, gave him a thorough seven-dimensional near-melding at one extremity of their essences, and put his corporation back on.

Crowley did the same after a bit. He came back to the usual human planes of existence to find Aziraphale gazing at him with a mix of yearning and satisfaction, and a teacup in hand.

"Give me that," Crowley muttered, taking the cup from Aziraphale's hand, and kissed him while still holding it.

The sex was better for having perceived each other's true forms. But it wasn't nearly as hot as the knowing, and that could be done in any body.

**Author's Note:**

>   1. Before proceeding to describe the decorations on the arched ceiling. He really was a bastard at heart. [ ▲ ]
>   2. The Most High's repository is 99% "genetic sequencing", including comments. The remaining 1% is INTERCAL.  [ ▲ ]
>   3. In the form of his phone. He quite enjoyed being part of reptiblr, who were very enthusiastic about his unusual pet snake, its glorious red underbelly, and its propensity to dramatically curl around the various non-fruiting trees in his apartment and glare at the camera. [ ▲ ]
>   4. Aziraphale was quite keen on the fruits of his own wrath.  [ ▲ ]
>   5. They both had an attitude towards sexual practices involving each other similar to Mae West, and this one was looking like more than twice might be nice. [ ▲ ]
> 

> 
>   
> Instructions for footnotes from [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192773).
> 
> This fic has been sitting around stuck for about a year now. The original ending was going to be something like "mumble mumble version update allowing for contraception. or maybe it was always there and they just didn't rtfm hard enough". I decided that since I've moved on to other fandoms, I might as well post what I had. Thanks for reading.


End file.
